No floor plans?!

[MsNevermore]

Why oh why is it such a common thing for estate agents not to provide floor plans of the properties on their books?!!!!

Currently trying to find a house for when we come back to the U.K. and whenever I send a RightMove enquiry (including the important point that we are returning from overseas) requesting a floor plan or even just measurements, I’m getting “We don’t do floor plans, but you’re welcome to book a viewing” 🫠

Well considering I’m currently 5 and half thousand miles away, I can’t really pop over and view it!!!
Lack of floor plans is now meaning that houses we really like the look of are a right off because we have no idea of square-footage and no idea of whether our giant American furniture will fit in the rooms!

Is there a valid reason I’m missing for not providing a floor plan?
Or is it just one more job that letting agents can’t be arsed to do? 😭

How odd. Every listing I’ve ever looked at has a floor plan.

Is it for rental ? Rentals do not always have floor plans
But you can sometimes look up historic listing of same property for sale

You can ask for live video walk through viewing

Very strange!

I haven't seen a single house marketed without a floor plan near me for absolutely years.

What sort of price point are we talking?

So many in the area we are going to has no floor plan and no square footage. Just says “ask agent”. Same with any of the utility supply information. It’s a very rural area, so I’d quite like to know if properties are gas/oil heating from the get go, so I can decide whether it’s worth even looking at.

Budget is £2500-£3000pcm

This is the only answer you need ☺️

Thank you, that’s really helpful!

Some of the ones we’ve looked at are new builds, but some are very old cottage-style, so might be able to find some historical info on those ones

@MsNevermore we've friends who've had to take windows out to get furniture in because of the width of the doors and narrow hallway. You've a valid point.

Yeah….My DH had that issue with his first U.K. house 🫠
It was a narrow, 3-story Victorian with L-shaped stairs. Window had to come out to get the huge American sofa in. Other furniture wouldn’t go up the stairs so had to live in the cellar 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Oh, do you mean to rent? I thought you meant to buy. Estate agents are normally for buying and selling houses. Lettings agencies are for letting and renting - though many will do both.

Yeah I’ve enquired about a few properties and have reached both letting and estate agents 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think for lettings they don't bother because they get snapped up so fast it's not worth bothering with full-featured listings. Round my way a "normal" property generally seems to get let within a week of the listing appearing. Some of the more unusual properties can take a bit longer, but for the rest it seems it's pretty much a race to the finish and there's no time for floorplans.

When my db came back to the UK it was cheaper to buy new furniture than ship the old stuff. Just sayin'...

Yeah, you usually have to do a ton of sluething. I usually go to streetview, find the house/house number, go to rightmove and or zoopla, find the previously sold details for that house or one that looks exactly the same size on the same street and see if there were floor plans listed on the sale advert. Usually more common to find on Zoopla.

Failing that, ask the agent for the full address so you can look at the EPC. Put 'find epc' into google, the energy certificate should tell you the square metre footgage of the house (caveat: I've seen them be wrong by as much as 60% over and 40% under - but if a few in the same street are all broadly similar, it's usually somewhat safe).

We are in a very fortunate position - it’s a military move so everything moving-wise is taken care of.
Will cost us $0.
We move so often, it’s not really workable to replace everything every time we move.

This is super helpful!
Thank you ❤️

Pleasure. When you open the PDF of the EPC, scroll straight to the bottom. Look for a link where it says 'other certificates for this property', then check the size there too. If the new EPC says 220 sq m and the old one says 138, it's either been vastly extended (which you can tell by brick colour / common sense things like there no longer being a garage/only a slither down the drive) or someone somewhere messed up, and you need to investigate by looking at it from an aerial view and comparing what's around it.

Welcome to the UK, where you have to work your arse off to pay people a lot of money. I'm so sorry for your move!

Also very helpful!

I’m British, as are my kids. It’s DH that’s the American.
I know the U.K. has its issues, I’m not blind to them……but we are extremely happy to be coming home. The US is a literal dumpster fire right now 🫠🫠🫠

In my home town there is one estate agent that never show floorplans, either on their own website or on Rightmove. I find it bizarre they don’t do it, all other local estate agents do.

I’m finding it really odd that there’s some in the area we are looking that have really detailed floor plans - so the total square footage, measurements of rooms etc.
And then there’s loads that have nothing. Even if I go to the actual agent’s website rather than RightMove, there’s nothing.
Which is not just unhelpful for people like us, but also those moving within the U.K.?!
Personally I’d like to know if I’ve got to change my sofa etc before I get there 🤷🏻‍♀️😂🫠
I know that generally speaking, UK houses are just smaller than US homes, so I’ve accepted we are likely going to be sacrificing a fair bit of square footage compared to what we have now. But I like to know how much because I’m fine with having to change our sofa…..but I really don’t want to have to get rid of my massive bed 😭

If it’s a funded move, can you get help from a relocation agent? Theyre good for this sort of stuff.

On the utility supplies- they may think you mean suppliers rather than type. Tweaking the question might get a clearer answer there.

the EPC should give the type too.

Usually there is assistance from a relocation agent….but those are usually tied to the giant overseas military installations.
This time, we are headed to a really tiny base in the arse end of nowhere that doesn’t have most of the usual amenities and support services that bigger installations do have.
We don’t even have a school liaison this time, so we are going in totally blind with that too 🫠
Its great fun 🫣🤯

There might be a mumsnetter whose based in the area that can help. Worth starting a thread. Or do as I did son was looking for somewhere to rent in Yorkshire. I found the local FB group page. People were so helpful. An EA contacted me saying that there was a lovely flat coming up would he like to view it. He's still there three years later.

I have got myself on the Facebook page for military families at this particular base…..but the page is pretty dead!
So I will definitely look at more general area pages.
I’m less worried about the school situation, as we do get an extremely generous education allowance to put the DC’s into private, but the housing malarkey has got my head in a spin because this time, it really is us being thrown in at the deep end with very little support from the USAF unlike previous moves!